Tennessee’s Lane Kiffin currently sports a simple 1-1 career record as a college football head coach, but from everything that’s been written about the guy, it feels like he’s been around a lot longer than that. In his first offseason as coach, he got more than his fair share of headlines — mostly because he is kind of an idiot who can’t keep his mouth shut.

He seems to operate on the premise that any publicity is good publicity, even going so far to say that the aforementioned offseason headlines were all part of his master plan to bring Tennessee back to respectability. He’s been ripped as a bad coach, as a spoiled brat, as a liar, and as someone whose meteoric rise is due solely to family connections. Apparently, now he’s trying to change that perception by opening up to sympathetic journalists for long-form puff profiles. Um, Lane — it’s not working.

YAHOO!!! SPORTS’ Jason King, who is a great guy and a great writer (despite his Baylor degree), penned a profile of Kiffykins purporting to show the “real” Lane Kiffin. Rather than focus on all the negative things that have been said about the young coach in the past, King attempts to paint a portrait of a caring, intelligent, competent coach who knows exactly what he’s gotten himself into. But for a guy who owes his entire career to the fact he was born with the last name Kiffin, quotes like this don’t help:

Much of Kiffin’s childhood was spent in NFL locker rooms or at training camps while his dad was coaching at places such as Minnesota, Green Bay and Buffalo. Some summers he’d serve as a ball boy. Other times he’d raise money by washing players’ cars while they practiced.

Kiffin’s exposure to high-level football was invaluable.

There ya go, folks. Anyone who’s wondered why a 34-year-old who has never really succeeded at anything is suddenly the head coach of a major college football program now has their answer - he learned so much about football washing Reggie White’s car.

Seriously, though, the closest thing Jason King got to a compliment from a fellow coach for Kiffin was from his father, unless you count the quotes from his high school football coach that aren’t entirely flattering. When the primary sources for good information about a coach’s qualifications are from his immediate family, perhaps one might wonder why all those bridges around him are in flames. Good luck with that, Vols fans!

This entry was posted
on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 10:45 am and is filed under Dumbass Coach, College Football.
Visited 4,368 times, 1 so far today